Major League EatingReview

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Food poisoning.

By Daemon Hatfield

Competitive eating has risen in popularity in recent years, and anything that is remotely popular needs to have a videogame. Thus, the Major League Eating game has been inflicted on Nintendo's WiiWare service. It's another fine piece of shovelware, crafted with about as much care as contestants in this sport use to cram hot dogs down their throats. Shallow gameplay? Check. Poorly-implemented motion controls? Check. Generic graphics and music? Check. Unless you're a six-year old who thinks farts are hilarious, don't choke on this garbage.

Gameplay consists entirely of one-on-one eating contests that use a variety of obnoxious remote motions. Sometimes you'll have to swing the remote upwards to stuff meatballs in your mouth. Or maybe hold it like a corncob and move side to side to bite off hunks of rib meat. The B button is used to chew your food, but you have to time your bites with a "chew meter" in the corner of the screen. So you're stuffing and chewing at the same time, trying to swallow more food than your opponent within the allotted time.

But you have to keep an eye on your belly and esophagus, because, if they fill up, you will vomit. That gets you disqualified. Luckily, just like in real life, to make more room in your gullet all you have to do is hold the A button and wave your remote. After a few seconds you'll be good to go.

The controls are unresponsive and you can usually find a method the developers didn't intend that works better. Instead of holding the remote like a corncob, for instance, holding it at your side and shaking it seems to accomplish the same effect.

Power-ups will appear in your shared food pile, available to whoever can grab them first. They may allow you to let off some nasty gas and stun your opponent for a moment. If you find a star, it will initialize a burp-off where you vigorously shake your remote to belch in the other guy's face. This is classy stuff.

The menus feature some decent hand drawn artwork of the characters, but the in-game 3D renders are pretty awful. Even the vomit and burp effects look cheap.

The Verdict

And that's about everything Major League Eating has to offer. You can play through the single-player roster several times to unlock a few characters. Then there are local and online multiplayer modes, but they just replace a computer opponent with a human. Online works fine, for what it is. There just isn't much content here. It's another clunky, ugly Wii game that consists of waving your arms around looking like a jackass. If that's what you're interested in, you don't need a Wii to do it.